Recently, with the common use of terminals, such as smart phones and tablet Personal Computers (PCs), and increasing demands for multimedia services, high-speed data transmission/reception is required to service high-capacity traffic. Accordingly, studies on multi-cell cooperative communication systems are increasingly conducted as one of the methods for providing high-capacity and high-speed communication for one piece of user equipment (UE).
In the multi-cell cooperative communication systems, multiple Base stations (BSs) share data with one UE, unlike in the typical cellular communication systems in which a UE transmits/receives data only through one BS. That is, in the multi-cell cooperative communication systems (hereinafter, referred to as “cooperative communication systems”), one UE simultaneously transmits/receives data to/from multiple BSs. Since the multiple BSs simultaneously provide data services to one UE, the cooperative communication systems can provide higher-speed data transmission/reception than the typical systems. Therefore, the cooperative communication systems are suitable for servicing high-capacity multimedia. Such multi-cell cooperative communication systems are representative communication environments considered as next-generation communication systems, such as beyond-4G and 5G systems.